Archive for santa clause

Well, we survived the War on Christmas, this year, and hopefully, thanks to people like Congressman Doug Lamborn, Representative Candice Miller and others like Bill O'Reilly and Megyn Kelly, the battle will be easier next year.

From The Hill:

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) on Tuesday vowed to protect Christmas against what he called a “vocal minority” offended by its symbols and traditions.

“There is a vocal minority that is offended at the rest of us who want to celebrate Christmas,” he said Tuesday on “Fox and Friends.” “Just because someone is offended doesn't mean that they can shut down the religious celebration or acknowledgment of every other American.”

He's got a good point. We shouldn't let Christmas be compromised. It's written in stone, book and in movies. We all know the symbols of Yuletide by the time we reach age five. There's Christmas trees, Santa Claus, Rudolph the red nosed reindeer, oh, and electrical light icicles outlining the outside of our houses. It wouldn't be a real Christmas without them.

Two of the most important figures are that of Jesus and Santa. Both white if you listen to Megyn Kelly on Fox News.

Fox News host Megyn Kelly drew strong criticism recently for declaring on air that Santa and Jesus Christ are white. She was reacting to an article by Slate called, “Santa Claus Should Not be a White Man Anymore.”

“When I saw this headline, I kinda laughed and I said, ‘Oh, this is ridiculous. Yet another person claiming it's racist to have a white Santa.’ And by the way, for all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white,” Kelly said on Fox News.

First, from strictly an anthropological study, Jesus was not your traditional white man -- he would have features more natural to the region and parents he was born to. He was born a Jew and looked like the rest of the Middle Eastern looking Jews of the time. According to Biblical History Daily:

The influences of the artists' cultures and traditions can be profound, observes Carlos F. Cardoza-Orlandi, associate professor of world Christianity at Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta. "While Western imagery is dominant, in other parts of the world he is often shown as black, Arab or Hispanic."

But let's go along with the fact that Jesus was a real man -- a God or son of God, who knows? But he was flesh and blood. So an argument can be made over his looks.

Now we come to Santa. He's fictional despite the ever foggy Megyn's protests. Perhaps he's based on a compilation of real people, but that's not known for sure. So how he looked, how he dressed and how he acted are all fiction, the product of imagination and legend -- not doctrine, treatise or tenet. Please Megyn, get this straight, there never was, is and never will be a real Santa Claus. Sorry to break the news to you at this age. Perhaps your parents neglected to explain that to you. But okay. Now you know.

Armed now with the truth, you should know that a fictional character can be interpreted many ways. Look at this list of Broadway shows, Hello Dolly, Streetcar Named Desire, Wizard of Oz (The Wiz), Death of a Salesman, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Cats, Fiddler On The Roof, and Oklahoma. You know what they have in common? They were predominantly White casted plays, with Black cast versions done as revivals. And all were successful. Broadway didn't shut down when Pearl Bailey became Dolly Levi or Blair Underwood as Stanley.

So chill your jets, Mr. Kelly, with your outrageous claims that a fictional character could only be one color or race. Accept that real characters have definitive images. Fictional ones like Santa have all sorts of incarnations. And Black can be one of them. Even a newsreader like you should know that. Or maybe you don't -- and that's why you're the darling of Fox News. You can say and do anything and a number of people will believe you.